HONOLULU - The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Center for Chinese Studies announces the latest awards presented to graduate students and faculty members of the university from the Chung Fong and Grace Ning Fund in Chinese Studies. The endowment was established in 2000 to support China-focused academic projects at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

The latest award winners include:

Song Jiang, instructor, East Asian Languages & Literatures — Travel support to present "Building Automaticity In Both Aural and Visual Recognition of Words through a Web-based Chinese Vocabulary Builder" at the 2007 annual joint conference of the Chinese Language Teachers Association and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, in San Antonio, TX.

Chanyaporn Parinyavottichai, PhD student, East Asian Languages & Literatures — Travel support to conduct field research in Bangkok. Her dissertation focuses on a cognitive approach to teaching Thai students the "IN" and "OUT" directional complements of Chinese.

Stephen Tschudi, instructor, Languages, Linguistics & Literatures and East Asian Languages & Literatures — Travel support to present "Hybrid Courses: Leveraging the Web" at the 2007 annual joint conference of the Chinese Language Teachers Association and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, in San Antonio, TX.

Ying-Shan Wei, PhD student, Sociology — Travel support to present "Patterns and Determinants of Women's Retirement in Taiwan" at the annual conference of the Taiwanese Sociological Association in Taipei, Taiwan.

For further information, contact the Center for Chinese Studies at 956-2692 or cyndy@hawaii.edu.

The Chung-Fong and Grace Ning Fund is named for the parents of UH Mānoa Center for Chinese Studies Associate Director Cynthia Ning. Chung Fong and Grace Ning, long-time Hawaiʻi residents originally from China, lived in Pakistan for 17 years before arriving in the United States. All four of their children received scholarships to pursue their education in the United States. As a token of their appreciation, the Nings set aside a portion of their savings for an endowment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa to benefit the Chinese Studies program.